


Observation

by vasever



Category: Endgame (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-07
Updated: 2012-04-07
Packaged: 2017-11-03 04:32:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/377340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vasever/pseuds/vasever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arkady pays attention to Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Observation

It begins like this:  
Sam’s last two girlfriends (well, the only two he’s ever had) left him because of chess.

“It was romantic, at first, the way you always played chess in the park,” said the first, an English major, “but then it got annoying, and then I got angry that you cared more about a stupid game than me.”  
He’d responded that chess was more important than a stupid game, that it was a game of strategy and skill and...she left before he finished talking. 

The second was a fellow Economics major, a girl he’d met in a seminar about the origin of the rational-man theory of economic modeling, the one that inspired his thesis paper. She just sent him an email with the subject line URGENT. When he opened it two days later, after the World Chess Championships were over, it simply read: “If you don’t send a reply within 24 hours, we’re over.” And that was it. 

The point, as Arkady would say, is that Sam was single when he met the Russian grandmaster. 

Arkady can predict most people the way he can predict his opponent’s next move. It’s a simple skill, one cultivated over thousands of matches and opponents, how to understand someone in a glance. Druschev’s over-confidence is in his bowtie , Beliz’s deception in his constant nervous chatter, Xi’s aggression in her curt handshake.

So when he first saw Sam, the boy’s clothes told him that he was dirt-poor but well-educated: a graduate student. When Sam first asked to play a game (rather than the usual autograph), he heard that Sam was obsessed with chess, not with Arkady. And Arkady was intrigued. 

The vast majority of the population is capable of obsession with another person, the fuel of the vast industry of romance. In contrast, the percentage of the population capable of obsession with an object, a field of study, is small: most people despise their work, have a broad range of hobbies that they only mildly enjoy, don’t have a single area of focused interest. High-level chess players exhibit such obsession, but an amateur? Interesting.

This analysis, of course, was not the reason that Arkady agreed to play Sam. It really was because he needed someone outside the hotel, and a game was an easy incentive. And it wasn’t the reason he saved Sam’s number: again, someone both competent and easily motivated was useful. But it was the reason that Sam’s number is at the top of Arkady’s contact list. If he must ask someone for help, it might as well be someone interesting.


End file.
